Appeals court backs Newburgh 4 case

NEW YORK — An appeals court has upheld the convictions of the Newburgh Four in a terror plot to blow up New York City synagogues.

NEW YORK — An appeals court has upheld the convictions of the Newburgh Four in a terror plot to blow up New York City synagogues.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan made the decision public on Friday.

Lawyers for the four — all from Newburgh — James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen — had argued the government committed "outrageous governmental misconduct," entrapping the men in an elaborate sting that was only possible through relentless pressure from a paid informant.

The appeals court found the government's tactics didn't rise to the level of "outrageous misconduct."

The defense portrayed the men as harmless dupes led astray by the FBI informant who infiltrated a mosque.

With the encouragement of the informant, one of the men hatched the scheme to blow up the synagogues in the Bronx and to shoot down military cargo planes with missiles at Stewart Air National Guard Base.

The FBI informant, Shahed Hussain, who claimed to be a wealthy Pakistani businessman named "Maqsood" and would go to the Masjid Al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh. began meeting with Cromitie in 2008 and later with the entire group of four.

The four men were arrested in May 2009 after placing what they thought were real bombs outside synagogues in the Bronx.

They had planned to detonate the bombs after returning to Newburgh where they planned to shoot down planes at Stewart Air National Guard Base with Stinger missiles.

Defense attorneys had previously attacked Hussain's credibility, focusing on a 2003 fraud conviction in Albany that first pushed him into the role of informant and the $96,000 the FBI has paid him during his past three years of undercover work.

The men were convicted in October 2010 after a two-month trial. All received 25-year sentences.

In a 78-page decision, Judge Jon O. Newman, who was joined by Judge Reena Raggi in voting to uphold the conviction of Cromitie, said that based on what he told the informant and his other statements about wanting to bomb "a cop car," "hit the bridge" to New Jersey, "get a synagogue" and join a Pakistani terrori group, he had been disposed to commit an act of terror, The New York Times reported.

From these, "the jury was entitled to find that he had a pre-existing 'design' and hence a predisposition to inflict serious harm on interests of the United States, even though government officers afforded him the opportunity and the pseudo weapons for striking at specific targets," the judge wrote.

But Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs dissented citing the entrapment issue, according to the Times, and he wrote that there was "scarce evidence" that Cromitie had such a pre-existing design, and had responded to "badgering" by the informant. He said Cromitie saying he wanted to die like a martyr and "do something to America" were boasts and banter.

"The government agent supplied a design and gave it form, so that the agent rather than the defendant inspired the crime, provoked it, planned it, financed it, equipped it and furnished the time and targets," Jacobs was quoted by the Times.

However, the three judges unanimously rejected the three other men's claims of entrapment, and rejected arguments by all four to have their convictions overturned on grounds of government misconduct, the Times reported.

Payen's lawyer, Sam Braverman, told the Times that his client would appeal.